As Waitangi Day
approaches, time spins around us.As
we gaze back into the past, we also look into the future.It’s a time for celebrating our successes, and honouring our ancestors.What were the dreams that drove them when they forged this nation, and
what are the things that still bind us all together?What kind of a future are we hoping to shape for our children and
grandchildren?

Let’s begin
with the past. If one looks at those extraordinary images of the earth taken
from outer space, the archipelago of New Zealand appears as a small green
scatter of land in the midst of the world’s largest ocean.People had to invent blue-water sailing to reach this remote,
beautiful place; and in fact this was the last significant land-mass on earth to
be found and settled by human beings.
Long before the Vikings sailed out of Europe, the ancestors of Maori developed
fast sailing canoes and learned to navigate by the stars, crossing the Pacific
to the eastward, planting colonies and reaching South America by perhaps 1200AD
– one of the great seafaring feats in human history. At about the same time,
other Polynesian explorers arrived here in New Zealand after a wild, seaborne
adventure. Astonished by this vast country, so different from their tropical
homelands, they sailed home again to describe the new islands and pass on their
sailing directions. By about 1300AD, Polynesian settlements were springing up
around the coastline.About a hundred years later, a new society – Te Ao Maori -
was forming, distinct from anything in the island homelands. As the population
expanded and kin groups jostled for mana, fortified pa began to be built and new
art-forms and technologies were invented.Only
about two hundred and fifty years after that, in 1642, the Dutch explorer Abel
Tasman in his two ships ricocheted off the coast of Golden Bay – the first
contact between Maori and Europeans.Our human history is recent, and it has happened very
quickly.

By the time that Captain Cookarrived
at Turanganui (or Poverty Bay, as he called it) in October 1769, the
Enlightenment was under way in Europe. This scientific expedition - another of
the great voyages in human history - brought with it ideas of justice, the power
of reason, and the rights of indigenous peoples. Before they sailed, the Earl of
Morton, President of the Royal Society which sponsored the voyage, gave Cook a
set of ‘Hints’ about how to treat the people he might meet during his
travels, and these are worth quoting.The
Earl urged Cook

“To check the petulance of the Sailors, and restrain the wanton use of
Fire Arms.

To have it still in view that sheding the blood of those people is a
crime of the highest nature:-

They are the natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal
possessors of the several Regions they inhabit.

No European Nation has a right to occupy any part of their country, or
settle among them without their voluntary consent.

They may naturally and justly attempt to repell intruders, whom they may
apprehend are come to disturb them in the quiet possession of their country,
whether that apprehension be well or ill founded.

Therefore should they in a hostile manner oppose a landing, and kill
some men in the attempt, even this would hardly justify firing among them,
‘till every other gentle method had been tried.”

Not a bad set of instructions for the first Europeans to set foot in New
Zealand. In the Earl of Morton’s ‘Hints,’ you might say, with its sense of
shared humanity, the Treaty of Waitangi had its beginnings.

Despite their best intentions, however, as soon as Cook and his men
stepped ashore, the encounters with local Maori turned violent.A wero or challenge by four
Hauiti warriors looked like an attack, and when one of these men was about to
throw his spear, the coxswain shot him through the heart.In the realpolitik of an confrontation with Maori warriors, the Earl of
Morton’s instructions were forgotten. The following day when Cook and his
sailors went out in the bay to capture some Maori fishermen, hoping to win their
friendship, the fishermen resisted, hurling paddles, anchor stones and even fish
at the sailors, and again there were shootings. As Cook wrote in his journal
that night, ‘I am aware that most humane men who have not experienced things
of this nature will censure my conduct in fireing upon the people in this boat,
and had I thought that they would have made the least resistance I would not
have come near them, but as they did I was not to stand still and suffer either
myself or those that were with me to be knocked on the head;’ while Joseph
Banks, the wealthy young botanist who led the Royal Society party, wrote about
the day, ‘Black be the mark for it, and heaven send that such may not return
to embitter future reflection!’

Even amidst
these violent clashes, however, there were moments of amity – for instance
when Cook exchanged a hongi with a warrior on Te Toka-a-Taiau, a sacred rock in
the Turanganui river. Later, this same man chased the Endeavour in his canoe and invited Cook and his men to come back to
Gisborne. After experiencing the power of muskets, Maori generally established
good working relationships with the strangers, bartering fish, crayfish,
oysters, kumara, wood and fresh water for glass, red cloth, biscuits and iron.
In places like Uawa on the East Coast, where the high priest Tupa’ia (who had
accompanied Cook from Tahiti) talked with Hauiti people about life in the island
homelands, the mood was affable, if cautious. Tupa’ia was welcomed and slept
ashore in a cave just above Cook’s Cove, where he sketched a ship on the rock
wall – the first early contact artwork in New Zealand. These early meetings
were marked by curiosity and peaceful exchange as well episodic violence. There
was also mutual respect - even after some of his men had been killed and eaten
at Grass Cove in Totaranui during a later voyage to New Zealand, Captain Cook
held a high opinion of Maori, saying that ‘They are a brave, noble and open
people, incapable of treachery; but they will never forgive an insult if they
have the opportunity to resent it.’ An astute judgement, that echoes down our
history.

As we all know,
Captain Cook’s three voyages to New Zealand heralded the advent of the
sealers, whalers and timber traders, and many young Maori men joined their ships
and sailed to distant places – South America, America and Asia as well as
Australia and Britain. By the 1790s the first Europeans were living ashore,
joining local families and learning to speak Maori. For at least seventy years
after Cook, New Zealand was still a Maori country where Europeans lived on
sufferance, reliant upon the goodwill of the rangatira
or chiefs. It
was not until the first missionaries arrived in 1814 that the first serious
attempt was made to change the way in which this world operated. John Lidiard
Nicholas, who accompanied Samuel Marsden on his first voyage to the Bay of
Islands, explained the rationale when he wrote:

“Though the
savage does possess all the passions of Nature, pure and unadulterated, and
though he may in many instances feel strongly and more acutrely than the man of
civilized habits, still is he inferior to him in every other respect: the former
is a slave to the impulse of his will, the latter has learned to restrain his
desires; the former stands enveloped in the dark clouds of ignorance, the latter
goes forth in the bright sunshine of knowledge; the former views the works of
his Creator through the medium of a blind superstition, the latter through the
light of reason and of truth; the one beholds Nature and is bewildered, the
other clearly ‘Looks through Nature up to Nature’s God.”

From Thomas
Kendall onwards, when a missionary wavered and began to think that Maori beliefs
and knowledge might have real merit, he was regarded as a heretic and drummed
out of the Society. At about this time, a more hard-edged sense of cultural
superiority arrived in New Zealand.

***********

Gazing back at
this founding period in our history, one can see that the ancestors on both
sides were explorers and travellers, bold enough to venture into unknown places.
Courage, a sense of adventure and a
willingness to innovate are built into the DNA of our society.At the same time, the settler heritage was based on ambivalent values –
a desire for freedom and personal liberty on the one hand, so that many of the
first European settlers in New Zealand risked everything to create new lives for
themselves and their families. On the other hand, there was a sense of cultural
superiority coupled with a will to impose that on others - what Jamie Belich has
described as the ‘imperial mission;’ although this might be balanced by
values of justice, honour and fair play. By the same token, the Maori heritage
had its own contradictions – a desire for freedom and autonomy on the one
hand, expressed in a willingness to migrate or fight to escape domination; while
the values of tika and pono
gave the rangatira or chiefs an
unerring ability to detect deceit and hypocrisy. On the other hand, the values
of mana and utu could also expressed as a will to dominate and control;
althought this might be balanced by the principle of reciprocity and a powerful
dislike of arrogance.

When
the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840, all of these paradoxical values were
in play. This is why the Treaty, for all its apparent simplicity, is such a
complex agreement. Ideas of justice
and honour, as advocated by the Aboriginal Protection Society in London and many
of the missionaries, meant that the British government was compelled to
recognise Maori territorial rights and treat with the rangatira,
even though many of the settlers were itching to simply assert British
dominance. Worried about the uncontrolled violence of escaped convicts and other
lawless new arrivals, and excited by many (if not all) aspects of the new world
in Europe, Maori leaders could also see benefits in having a British governor in
New Zealand. Because many of the rangatira or chiefs had travelled to Port Jackson, Britain and other
places, however, they were concerned that a British governor might bring
soldiers and take over their country; although they were assured that without
British protection, the French would invade them in any case. The missionary
Henry Williams and his son Edward, convinced that life for both Maori and the
settlers would be better under British rule, translated the treaty from English
into Maori, and urged the Northern chiefs who gathered at Waitangi to sign it.There are thus two texts of the Treaty, the original in English and the
Maori Treaty that was debated and signed at Waitangi (and a number of other
locations).

There can
be little doubt that the Maori Treaty, the text debated and signed by the
chiefs, is the more authoritative version.The Maori Treaty is couched in the language of chiefly gift exchange,
with gifts passing between the Queen and the rangatira
or chiefs of the hapu or
sub-tribes. In Article I of the Maori
Treaty, the rangatira ceremonially
gave to Queen Victoria absolutely and forever thekawanatanga or governorship of
their lands.In Article II, the Queen agreed to uphold the tino rangatiratanga or absolute chieftainshipof the rangatira over
their lands, dwelling places and all of their treasures, while in return they
gave her the right to control the sale of land where the sellers were willing.
In Article III, in exchange for the
gift of kawanatanga or governorship,
the Queen promised to protect all Maori people and give them exactly the same tikanga,
orrights and privileges as her people of England.It was an agreement based on chiefly generosity on both sides, and a
sense of mana and honour.

During
the debates before the Treaty was signed, the chiefs argued about whether or not
to have a governor and how he might treat them; while the prospective Governor,
William Hobson, promised that if they signed the Treaty, all those lands
unfairly claimed by the settlers would be given back to them. In the end, the
overwhelming majority of the chiefs signed (but not some of the highest chiefs
in the land, including Te Heuheu of Tuwharetoa, Potatau te Wherowhero of Waikato
and Te Kani a Takirau of the East Coast, who were unwilling to yield any of
their mana to Queen Victoria). Without doubt, what was ceded to the Queen in the
Maori version of the Treaty was less than the ‘sovereignty’ spoken of in the
English text; although the gift of kawanatanga
in exchange for exactly the same rights and privileges as British subjects
was a fundamental concession, changing the Maori world forever.

While the values of honour and justice, and tika and pono may have
prevailed in the Treaty itself, there have been debates about whether the
language of the Maori text was softened to ensure that the rangatira
would sign it.Very likely it
was, given the the sincere belief of the translators that British rule would
benefit Maori as well as the settlers. Within a month, however, the ‘imperial
mission’ had taken over, initiating a long period of disillusionment and
fighting. A Land Claims Bill was introduced in New South Wales which threatened
to take away all Maori lands over 2500 acres said to have been sold to
Europeans, contrary to the Governor’s promises; and shortly afterwards a
Legislative Council was set up in New Zealand without Maori representation,
contrary to Article III of the Treaty. While some Northern chiefs vowed to stop
all land sales, others vowed to resist the presence of British soldiers who were
threatening to overturn their mana. Hone Heke chopped down the flagpole at
Kororareka, and in the Northern War that followed, the British forces were
unable to decisively defeat him and his allies. As Henry Williams observed in
1845, ‘The Flagstaff in the Bay is still prostrate,
and the natives here rule.These
are humiliating facts to the proud Englishman, many of whom thought that they
could govern by a mere name.’

Over the years since the Waitangi Tribunal was established, an army of
researchers have documented successive breaches of the Treaty, to the benefit of
the nation. As an American philosopher, George Santayana has said, “Those who
cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it;” and there are parts of our
story that would not bear repeating. Even in our darkest days, however, there
have been those among the settlers who upheld the values of honour and justice.
When the Land Wars broke out in 1860, for instance, the former Chief Justice of
New Zealand, Sir William Martin, wrote a pamphlet arguing that since the Queen
had guaranteed the tino rangatiratanga of
the chiefs, the forced land sale which sparked off the war was a betrayal of the
Treaty of Waitangi:

“Here in
New Zealand our nation has engaged in an enterprise most difficult, yet also
most noble and worthy of England.We
have undertaken to acquire these islands for the Crown and for our race, without
violence and without fraud, and so that the Native people, instead of being
destroyed, should be protected and civilised.We have covenanted with these people, and assured to them the full
privileges of subjects of the Crown. The compact is binding irrevocably.We cannot repudiate it so long as we retain the benefit which we obtained
by it.”

Like the Earl
of Morton’s Hints and Captain Cook’s evaluation of Maori, these words echo
down our history. In a series of brilliant letters to the local Superintendant,
Renata Tamakihikurangi of Hawkes Bay offered a similar view of the conflict:

When you speak of
the [Maori] King. Sir, cease to cite this as a cause of quarreling. For behold,
the Treaty of Waitangi has been broken. It was said that the Treaty was to
protect the Maoris from foreign invasion.But
those bad nations never came to attack us; the blow fell from you, the nation
who made that same Treaty.Sir, it
is you alone who have broken your numerous promises.

You say, the
Maories are not able to fight against the Queen of England and prevail against
her.’Who will throw himself away
in fighting for such a cause?No,
it is for the land; for land has been the prime cause of war among the Maoris
down to the arrival of the Pakeha in this island.The Maori will not be daunted by his weakness, or the smallness of his
tribe.He sees his land going, and
will he sit still?No, but he will
take himself off to resist..

On this
occasion, however, the voices of reason were drowned out by greed and the will
to domination.In the conflicts
that followed, many lives were lost on both sides, and the wars ended in mutual
exhaustion.Those Maori who fought
against the Crown adapted their pa or
fortifications to fight soldiers armed with artillery, and proved extremely
difficult to conquer, although unlike the British, they were unable to sustain a
full-time army.Those Maori who
fought with the Crown did so for their own reasons - mana and the preservation of their ownland and
resources. By the end of the Land Wars, sections of almost all Maori groups were
in sympathy with the Maori King, supporting him as they were able. These long,
destructive campaigns ended in the splitting of many hapu, the confiscation of millions of acres of Maori land and a deep
and abiding sense of grievance.

This darkness
deepened when after the Land Wars, the Maori population plummeted.This decline was already underway, sparked by epidemics of introduced
diseases, the destructive effects of the Musket Wars, and shifts from a
traditional diet and lifestyle. During the 1880s and 1890s, however, the
collapse became cataclysmic.Like others, Maori thought that they were a dying race, and
while they turned to prophetic healers for consolation, the settlers took more
of their land through the Native Land Court. By 1896, the Maori population,
which had dropped to just 42,000 people, was said to be vanishing like the moa.Out of this catastrophe came a new kind of Maori leadership - the Young
Maori Party led by Sir Apirana Ngata, which tackled the decline by improving
sanitation in Maori communities, fostering a new love of Maori arts and culture,
actively engaging in Parliamentary politics and trying to hold onto Maori land
through incorporation and consolidation schemes based on sheepfarming and
dairying.

As it happened, the Maori renaissance initiated by Ngata and others
shaped race relations through the twentieth century. It was based on strategies
for survival - economic recovery, pride in Maori language and culture and an
active engagement with the wider society. As these new leaders emerged, some
armed with advanced university qualifications, Maori grievances were made
articulated through the media and Parliament.Two generations of young Maori went off to fight in European wars,
winning the respect of their comrades – although too many future leaders,
Maori and others, died in these conflicts. After World War II many rural
families, including many Maori, flooded into the cities, creating new challenges
to cultural survival. The Land March, Bastion Point, and a series of other
protests about the loss of Maori land and language soon followed. With the
creation of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975, a generation of legal successors to
Sir William Martin – Paul Temm, David Baragwanath, Dame Sian Elias, Sir Robin
Cook and many others, began to re-shape New Zealand jurisprudence, along with a
new generation of Maori lawyers. Maori advocates including Patu Hohepa, Ranginui
Walker, Syd and Hana Jackson, Pita Sharples, Tariana Turia, Tame Iti and many
others provoked shifts in public opinion, sometimes affronting the wider public
and sometimes winning their sympathy.To
their eternal credit, many other New Zealanders listened, and a huge effort was
made to address Maori grievances. As the light of honour and justice shone on
those dark moments in our history, there was a sense of hope and purpose in the
land.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, this mood seemed
to be changing. While some New Zealanders still found these debates exciting,
many others seemed to wish that the Maori challenge would simply vanish. The
population was increasingly diverse, with extensive intermarriage and new
migrants from the Pacific, Asia and Europe -and for all of these reasons, the bi-cultural philosophies forged by Sir
Apirana Ngata came under fire. The 2004 speech by Don Brash at Orewa, which
portrayed Maori as privileged despite a myriad of statistics demonstrating their
health, wealth and educational disadvantage, had an extraordinary impact on
non-Maori New Zealanders. A mood of popular resentment against Maori claims led
to the Foreshore and Seabed Act, which overturned a Court of Appeal ruling that
Maori might still have rights to these places (without touching other private
rights to the foreshore and seabed); which in turn sparked the creation of the
Maori Party. Last year this mood culminated in the so-called ‘terrorism’
raids in the Ureweras and elsewhere, which uniquely in the world targeted
domestic protestors and an indigenous community under anti-terror legislation.
At that moment, Maori opinion converged in near-unanimity, very like that seen
at the end of the Land Wars and in diametrical opposition to majority opinion
among non-Maori New Zealanders. Just as we seemed to be heading back towards the
abyss, the law, in the shape of the Solicitor-General, hauled us all back from
collective hysteria. These recent events make early 2008 a challenging time to
be asked to deliver an address on how we can all ensure that in 2040, the
bicentennial of the Treaty is a happy and positive occasion.

Fortunately, New Zealanders have a powerful sense of fair play; and we
all have a great deal at stake in these matters. Furthermore, there are grave
risks in allowing the divisions between Maori and other New Zealanders to
deepen. While at present, many New Zealanders may be tempted to set the Treaty
aside as an historical irrelevance, I think that they are mistaken.There is little chance that most Maori, an increasing proportion of the
national population, will join them. At the same time, the gap between rich and
poor in New Zealand is increasing faster than in most OECD countries, and many
Maori families sit on the negative side of those statistics. Add ethnicity to
disadvantage to grievance, and you have an inflammable combination. Look around
the world, and you will see many countries - Bosnia, Ireland, Fiji, Pakistan and
Kenya, to name just a few - that
have torn themselves apart over ethnic and/or religious divisions. From the
international literature, it is clear that no contemporary society is immune to
such tensions.Much depends on the
wisdom of leaders, who have the power either to draw people together or set them
at eachother’s throats over real or imagined injustices. If such conflicts
spiral out of control, no-one emerges a winner.Families are divided, friendships and communities shattered, economies
destroyed and nations destabilised.The
costs of such conflicts are so severe that the costs involved in settling
historic grievances and building a fair and good-humoured society seem trivial
by comparison.

Fortunately, however, leaders can and do surmount such historic
divisions. It happened in South Africa with the leadership of Nelson Mandela;
more recently in Ireland; and in New Zealand during the 1980s and 90s, when
bipartisan support emerged for the Waitangi Tribunal, with Matiu Rata and Sir
Douglas Graham both playing pivotal roles in its shaping.Although it’s true that our history in New Zealand presents us with
challenges, its also true that we like to tackle the high mountains.For heritage is not just a matter of history; it is also a question of
choice – what we decide to take from the past into the future.There is a kind of Orcs’ song (remember the Lord of the Rings?), for
instance, that runs through our history, at least from the Land Wars - a chant
of grumbling and grinding hostility towards the tangata
whenua that should cease to be sung in the caverns. Instead, as we forge new
philosophies for the twenty-first century, I hope that we will hold fast to that
sense of mutual respect between Maori and other New Zealanders which goes back
to the beginning, and a certain generosity of spirit - remember Captain Cook’s
judgement - ‘They
are a brave, noble and open people, incapable of treachery; but they will never
forgive an insult if they have the opportunity to resent it.’ The Maori
heritage with its beautiful language, its knowledge systems and philosophies,
its art forms and principles of balance, has riches to offer the future.In my experience, it is those who know least about it who are most apt to
dismiss this tradition, which is tragic, because if it is lost here in New
Zealand, it is lost on the planet.

At the same
time, let’s consign all cultural cringes to the dustbin of history. The
heritages from Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and the settler traditions have
their own riches to offer, which must also be celebrated. Our artists, singers,
composers, dancers, writers, film-makers and designers have shown how glorious
it can be, weaving these cultural strands together. We should honour the Treaty
of Waitangi, one of the finer moments in our history, preferably out of a sense
of justice; but at the very least because if its promises are ignored, the risks
to our society may prove intolerable. Remember Sir William Martin - “We have
covenanted with these people. The compact is binding irrevocably.We cannot repudiate it so long as we retain the benefit which
we obtained by it.” Our greatest
heroes exemplify this same sense of honour – for instance, Sir Ed Hilary, who
after winning world fame with the help of a Sherpa, dedicated the rest of his
life to those people. And when the current round of Treaty settlements are over,
we must look to the future, although this will require robust debate, because
the balances to be struck in a changing world between the various agreements in
the Treaty are by no means obvious. In all of this, we should bless our
ancestors for their curiosity and courage, andrecall the
dreams that brought them across a wild ocean – of freedom, autonomy,
opportunity and prosperity for their children and grandchildren. As they have
taught us, in a new land, anything is possible.

As we gaze into the future, I
hope that our leaders will seek to heal our divisions and bind us together. It
will be wonderful if our children and grandchildren are culturally as well as
economically rich, with a relaxed appreciation of other cultural traditions.
From what I have seen of Auckland schools - which often remind me of the United
Nations - that is already happening. It is also vital to find ways of ensuring
that the gaps between rich and poor do not become impassable in New Zealand -
not onlybecause if poverty becomes
entrenched among particular ethnic groups (Maori and Pasifika, for instance), it
will be dangerous; but also to prevent our finest values –justice, generosity
of spirit; the idea of a fair go - from dying. For these reasons, disparities in
educational achievement must be decisively tackled, once and for all. Educational
success is the best key to social freedom, and every child in New Zealand
deserves a fair chance to make a good life for themselves and their families –
its their birthright – its why their ancestors came here. I
hope that we will hold fast to our sense of adventure, boldly taking on the
world and its challenges; and take care of these beautiful islands, passing them
in great shape to future generations. Then when we come together to celebrate
the bicentennary of the Treaty in 2040, I am sure that it will be a genial,
luminous and marvellous occasion.

At the end of this 2008 Waitangi Rua Rau Tau Lecture, I’d like to quote
from two poems – well, one’s a line from a poem by Allen Curnow, and the
second is a favorite chant from my kaumatua and teacher, Eruera Stirling:.

Not I, some child in a marvellous year,

Will learn the trick of standing upright here…

And:

Whakarongo! Whakarongo! Whakarongo!Listen! Listen! Listen!

Ki te tangi a te manu e karanga neiTo the cry of the bird calling

Tui,
tui, tuituiaa!Bind, join, be one!

Tuia
i runga, tuia i raro,Bind above, bind
below

Tuia
i roto, tuia i waho,Bind within, bind
without

Tuia
i te here tangataTie the knot of humankind

Ka
rongo te poo, ka rongo te pooThe night
hears, the night hears

Tuia
i te kaawai tangata i heke maiBind the
lines of people coming down

I
Hawaiki nui, I Hawaiki roa,From great
Hawaiki, from long Hawaiki

I
Hawaiki paamamaoFrom Hawaiki far away

I
hono ki te wairua, ki te whai aoBind to
the spirit, to the day light